Motrja Fedorko of Rutherford felt better on Friday after her sister told her it was a quiet week in Lviv, a Ukrainian city about 300 miles west of Kiev.

Russian tanks have rolled into Crimea, an eastern peninsula on the Black Sea, but at the moment, the situation is stable in Lviv, where Fedorko’s sister lives.

“Everybody’s worried,” said Fedorko, 41, a mother of five who works at a New York museum. “My parents have been suggesting my sister take a vacation, but they know she won’t leave. She has family there. She’s been out at the demonstrations much less than some others have because she has a newborn.

“We keep a strict eye on the news,” she said. “On Friday nights, everyone meets at the Ukrainian Center in Passaic, and they put up a big screen and they stream the news and we sit and talk about it.” Passaic may be nearly 5,000 miles from Kiev but the upheaval in Ukraine is resonating strongly in New Jersey.

There are more than 70,000 Ukrainian-Americans living in the Garden State, according to the 2010 Census. New Jersey has the fourth-largest Ukrainian population in the country, ranking behind New York, Pennsylvania and California.

The internet has been vital for connecting Garden State Ukrainians with loved ones in the former Soviet republic.

“We have to give whatever kind of support we can give to our brothers and sisters in Ukraine,” said Stefan Zurawski, 65, of Clifton. “People make the protesters out to be fascists and radicals, but that’s coming from the Russian propaganda. They are regular people. These are educated people. They are nice people who want unity.”

When the movement took root in November, it didn’t make headlines in the mainstream American press. New Jersey’s Ukrainians followed developments via social media.

“There are times when I’ll break down in tears at work because I’m overwhelmed with what’s going on,” said Kate Laszyn, 23, of Clifton, a bank teller and member of the Ukrainian-American Youth Association. Her family is from Ukraine and Poland. “The people over there are standing their ground and they’re not breaking down. They’re fighting for freedom like my great-grandfather, who fought and died for Ukraine to be free.”

The tumult started with a street protest in response to then-president Viktor Yanukovych’s decision not to sign an agreement that would have facilitated a closer relationship between Ukraine and its European neighbors to the west.

That signified his allegiance to Russia. Activists who feared the move could compromise Ukraine’s independence set up camp in the Maidan, or Independence Square, in Kiev.

Borislaw Bilash, a physics teacher at Pascack Valley High School in Hillsdale, gathered information from Kiev-based bloggers and wrote an online primer about the situation days after the demonstration began. Although Bilash is a fifth-generation Ukrainian-American, he said he still feels bonded to his ancestral land. He and his children speak Ukrainian.

Bilash said he created the primer to help students and parents engage in informed discussions about the crisis.

Bilash also said he had mixed emotions watching activists in Kiev topple a statue of communist leader Vladimir Lenin.

“That was a scary moment,” said Bilash. “The Lenin monument stood for years in independent Ukraine. People would ask, ‘Why is Lenin still standing there?’ It was a reminder of the past. We don’t want to return to that past. When I was watching the fall of the monument, my concern was, ‘What’s the next thing that’s going to happen?’

These days, I find myself waking up at 5 a.m. without the alarm clock. There’s fear but there’s a lot of hope.”
In Ukrainian community centers, churches and cafes around New Jersey, people are gathering to discuss what can be done to preserve democracy in the region. There’s concern that Russian President Vladimir Putin is trying to claw back former Soviet republics and place them under communist control.

Laszyn said the United States should mobilize troops.

“We’re letting Putin do anything he wants, and it’s putting the whole world in danger,” said Laszyn. “Where’s the protection when Ukraine needs it? We have to act now in order for there not to be another world war.”

When police fired on protesters in Kiev on Feb. 20, killing dozens, local parishioners visited the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA headquarters in South Bound Brook for comfort, said Bishop Daniel, vice-chairman of the national clergy group.

On Thursday, Bishop Daniel, whose secular name is Volodymyr Zelinsky, and 100 New Jerseyans traveled to Washington, D.C., and participated in a demonstration outside the White House to encourage President Obama to impose stricter sanctions on Russia and provide humanitarian aid to Ukraine. The church will hold a memorial service for the fallen Maidan protestors later this month.

“The people on the street in Kiev are doing exactly what we would do here if somebody attacked our nation,” said Bishop Daniel. “Sometimes when you see the Ukrainian flag is flying and the people are screaming in the streets and demanding justice and demanding freedom, it could be perceived as radical. But I don’t see that as radical; I see that as being patriotic. It’s freedom of speech. That’s what we stand for in the United States of America.”